Clear skies, bright sun.
Jack piloted the Aerie back to the Villa and, on a whim, brought back a handful of phones. After a crash course in swiping and tapping for Lilah and the others, he called Caitlin Snow. She was driving to the lab. They traded a few words and she hung up.
He set the phone down and went back to studying the Speed Force.
Last night's duel with the Firestorm duo had only scratched the surface. The Speed Force carried a whole suite of applications. Some came easily—Reverse-Flash's high-speed hand blade, vibrating his facial muscles to blur his identity, whipping lightning trails off a full sprint. Others ran deeper. Time travel. Phasing through solid matter. Those demanded genuine mastery, a finer command of the Force itself.
Right now, Jack was still calibrating basic speed control. Not just how fast he appeared to others—how fast he felt, how the world resolved around him at velocity, how to throttle the difference between a jog and a blur.
The morning vanished somewhere in the middle of that.
---
After a shower, he wandered into the living room and clicked on the TV. Laurie was on the couch.
"Where is everyone?"
"They went out."
"Shopping? Why didn't you go with them?" Jack picked up a decorative ornament from the coffee table, shifted its atomic structure to solid gold, and tossed it to her. "That'll cover a car. Get out of the house once in a while."
Laurie caught it, mouth opening—then closing. By the time she found the words, Jack had already turned back to the television.
Breaking news. A bank robbery in progress—well, already over. A teller was being interviewed on-screen, describing how a thick fog had rolled through the lobby out of nowhere.
Fog.
Weather Wizard.
The particle accelerator's explosion hadn't just made The Flash. It had scattered meta-human abilities across Central City, and the Weather Wizard was one of them. One of two, technically—a pair of bank-robbing brothers who'd fled Joe West's pursuit in a small plane and flown straight into the blast. The police assumed the crash killed them. Instead, both walked away with the power to command the weather. The older brother's injuries had kept him out of sight, which meant this bank robber had to be the younger one.
Barry Allen's first villain. Jack couldn't recall the name, but the power was interesting enough.
Red lightning cracked through the living room and he was gone.
Infinite Superposition—double.
The TV series had him hiding out at a farm, Jack thought, and began combing every farm on Central City's outskirts.
Barns, fields, silos—the red streak flickered across them one by one, discarding each in turn.
He stopped dead.
A man stood in front of him, frozen mid-step, eyes wide.
"Y-you—" Clyde Mardon stared at the stranger who had materialized from a bolt of lightning. How—how did he just appear? Does he have powers too? One of those things in this city is already too many.
He didn't know who this was. Didn't know what he wanted.
Didn't matter. Decision made.
Clyde's arm whipped forward and a mist-wrapped whirlwind tore toward Jack.
The vortex detonated against the farmhouse wall and blew it into splinters.
Clyde peered through the debris cloud, searching for a body—and felt a tap on his shoulder.
He spun around.
Jack stood there, grinning, radiating the smug energy of someone watching a slow-motion replay.
"Credit where it's due—you didn't hesitate. Most idiots in your position monologue first." Jack tilted his head. "You, though... you're just slow."
"You—"
Clyde hurled himself backward, putting distance between them, arms spreading wide. His face strained with effort. Wind exploded to life around him, spiraling tighter, climbing higher, howling louder by the second.
The farmhouse roof ripped free and cartwheeled into the sky. Tools, fencing, anything not bolted down went airborne.
"YOU'RE DEAD!" Clyde bellowed over the roar.
"Maybe you. Not me—I'm not going to kill you." Jack's voice stayed conversational beneath the wind. "And I won't even use your ability to beat you. Might accidentally kill you with it, so..."
Red lightning flashed.
Jack stood directly in front of him, inside the storm.
"You—how did—"
"How am I ignoring the wind? Henchmen shouldn't ask so many questions." His hand closed around Clyde Mardon's throat and lifted.
Choking, feet scrambling for ground that wasn't there, Clyde felt the whirlwind around him stutter, slow, and collapse into stillness.
Jack's free hand rose beside Clyde's face and began to vibrate. Faster and faster until the fingers dissolved into a humming blur—harder than the eye could track, harder than bone should withstand.
"Here's your choice." Jack's grip tightened a fraction. "You attack S.T.A.R. Labs, or I vibrate this hand through your skull right now. You know the place. The particle accelerator that gave you your powers—their people already know meta-humans exist. They'll come for you eventually. So whether it's your own safety or just my threat doing the motivating, I'd say wrecking S.T.A.R. Labs is the smart play." He looked directly into Clyde's watering eyes. "What's it going to be?"
"I-I'll go..." Clyde wheezed.
Jack released him. Clyde dropped to the dirt in a heap.
"Don't think about running. You know..." Jack waggled a finger. "I'm very fast."
Clyde looked up to answer—
The space where Jack had stood was empty.
---
S.T.A.R. Labs. The rooftop.
The same spot where Caitlin Snow had been taken. Jack sat on the ledge, pulled out his phone, and dialed.
Caitlin picked up.
"Is Barry Allen at the lab?" Jack asked, skipping the greeting.
"No."
"Then call him back. Tell him to get to the lab."
"Why? What's going on?"
"Because a meta-human is about to attack S.T.A.R. Labs. The bank robber from the news."
"How do you—then get over here and help!" Caitlin's voice sharpened with alarm.
"Help? No, no. I won't be helping. I'm the one who forced him to attack in the first place—hardly my place to intervene." Jack chuckled, ended the call, and powered the phone off.
"You—you forced him—" Caitlin stared at her screen, questions jamming in her throat. The line was dead. She called back. Straight to voicemail. Off.
She grabbed her contacts and dialed Barry Allen's number, phone pressed hard against her ear as she strode toward the exit.